Why Lena Dunham Would ‘Kill Herself’ If She Woke Up As a Man

Millennial guru Lena Dunham doesn’t want to unexpectedly wake up as a man some day, and she wants you to know it. During her acceptance speech at the 2016 Matrix Media Awards on Monday morning, Dunham expounded upon why she’s so damn happy being a confident, powerful woman, and why she wouldn’t tolerate having it any other way.

“I made the very intelligent choice to join this group of women with absolutely nothing of note to share with you, because I felt strongly that listening to them and listening to Gloria [Steinem] would be transformative for me, and it was,” she began. “So what I wanted to say is when Andy [Cohen, the host of the ceremony] played his very fun game and scared the living shit out of us, he asked what I would do if I woke up and I was a man. And I said, kill myself.”

Pretty strong statement, no? Not by Dunham’s reasoning:

The reason I said that wasn’t because I was subscribing to an old binary. I love the fact that we’re in a time where we get to determine what gender looks and feels like to us, not because I wouldn’t know what to wear. It was because I feel so passionately lucky to be doing the work of being female right now. I feel lucky to be among these women and to be redefining what that means for us … to be continuing the work of Gloria and to be looking at what needs to be done to preserve rights that aren’t intact, but to carve out new areas that we never even imagined would be possible for us. I feel it happening every day, and it gets me fired up, and it’s what makes me wake up in the morning. It’s what makes me want to live a really long time. It’s what makes me eat well. It’s what makes me do yoga.

Dunham also recalled an occasion in which she did mushrooms during college, and the enrichment that ensued from the psychedelic experience:

I had a very strong feeling. I went into a bathroom and I looked in the mirror. Suddenly I felt the connection, not just to every woman who had come before me, but to everyone who would come after me, and the understanding that we were just a drop in a greater pool of water and our job was to move together in strength. Thank you, mushrooms. And taking that with me, enriched by the teachings of women like Gloria and the actions of women like the ones on this stage. I think that’s something that whole event speaks to, is the importance of intergenerational female friendship and intergenerational female mentorship.